Image: PJ Harvey and musicians rehearse amongst cables, pedals and instruments including drum kit, saxophone, autoharp and ornate hurdy gurdy in the pristine white recording studio as audience members watch through one-way glass at Somerset House, January, 2015. Photograph: Stephen White https://www.artangel.org.uk/recording-i ... iographies
01 "The Community Of Hope": song documents Hope VI, the US' flawed project to clear out and replace dilapidated social housing – and not always with the same number of residences.
Spoiler! :
Here's the Hope Six Demolition Project stretching down the Benning Road - the well-known "pathway of death", at least that's what I'm told
and here's one sit-down restaurant in Ward Seven. Nice. Okay, now this is just drug town, just zombies, but that's just life
in The Community of Hope The Community of Hope The Community of Hope The Community of Hope, hope, hope, hope
Here's the highway to death and destruction South Capitol is its name and the school that's looks like shit-hole - does that look like a nice place? Here's the old mental institution and the Homeland Security Base and here's God's Deliverance Centre and deli called M.L.K. [Martin Luther King]
and The Community of Hope The Community of Hope The Community of Hope The Community of Hope, hope, hope, hope
They're gonna put a Walmart here (×8)
02 "The Ministry of Defence"
Spoiler! :
03 "A Line In The Sand": "Enough is enough, a line in the sand, 7 or 8 thousand people killed by a hand", "I saw people kill each other just to get there first"; note "clapping".
04 "Chain Of Keys": guitar orchestra and Russian gospel choir, note "swing feel?".
Spoiler! :
Fifteen keys Fifteen keys are hang on chain The chain is joint The chain is joint and forms a ring The ring is in The ring is in a woman's hand She's walking on She's walking on the dusty ground
The dusty ground's a dead-end track The neighbours won't be coming back
The woman's old The woman's old and dressed in black She keeps her hands She keeps her hands behind her back Imagine what Imagine what her eyes have seen We ask, but she We ask, but she won't let us in
A key so simple and so small - how can it mean no chance at all? A key - a promise, or a wish; how can it mean such hopelessness?
"A circle is broken", she says "A circle is broken", she says...
05 "River Anacostia": about predominantly African-American district in Washington DC that was segregated by the construction of a freeway.
Spoiler! :
Oh my Anacostia do not sigh, do not weep Beneath the overpass your Savior's waiting patiently
Walking on the water flowing with the poisons from the naval yards He's talking to the fallen reeds
Saying "What will become of us?" What will become of us? Oh...
Wade in the water God's gonna trouble the water
A small red sun makes way for night trails away like a tail light Is that Jesus on the water talking to the fallen trees?
Saying "What will become of us?" What will become of us? Oh...
Wade in the water, God's gonna trouble the water (×3)
What will become if God's gonna trouble waters? (×3) Wade in the water, God's gonna trouble the water (×3)
Wade in the water God's gonna trouble the water
06 "Near the Memorials to Vietnam and Lincoln"
Spoiler! :
All Near the Memorials to Vietnam and Lincoln (×4)
At the refreshments stand a boy throws out his hands as if to feed the starlings, but really he throws nothing
It's just to watch them jump See the people coming They moving over the grass to squeze in two plastic chairs
All Near the Memorials to Vietnam and Lincoln (×4)
Three notes on the bugle call A black man in overalls arrives to empty the trash, hauls it to a metal hatch a doorway opens up to the underworld
The boy throws empty hands and the starlings jump
All Near the Memorials to Vietnam and Lincoln (×4)
07 "The Orange Monkey"
Spoiler! :
A restlessness took hold my brain and questions I could not hold back An orange monkey on a chain on a bleak uneven track
told me that to understand you must travel back time I took a plane to a foreign land and said, "I'll write down what I find"
Beneath a mountain's jagged shelves cloaked with snow and shadows sheer plates tipped up upon themselves the pain of fifty million years
and mules and goats were running wild A happy chaos carried on and old men and the young boys smiled and worked until the day was gone
The packs of sandy-coloured dogs walked streets that looked like building sites but piles of rocks and dust and smog could not block out a different light
When I returned I ran to meet the monkey, but his face had changed He stood before me on two feet The track was now a motorway
08 "Medicinals"
Spoiler! :
I was walking thru the National Mall, thinking about medicinals, how they used to grow there
When the ground was a marshland undisturbed by human hands, and I heard their voices:
Sumac said "We're always here" Witch Hazel - "We're always here" Sassafras - "We're always here" Bluestem grasses always here
I looked about, and what I see? Medicinals grow around me, rising from the gravel Sumac and the Witch Hazel Come to soothe our primal (?) sores, come to soothe our troubles
Sumac said "We're always here" Witch Hazel - "We're always here" Sassafras - "We're always here" Bluestem grass is always here
But do you see that woman, sitting in the wheelchair? With her Redskins cap on backwards What's that she's singing? As from inside a paper wrapper she sips from a bottle a new painkiller for the native people.
09 "The Ministry of Social Affairs"
Spoiler! :
Song is built around a leery old blues song, "That's What They Want" by Jerry McCain & His Upstarts, whose refrain – "That's what they want / Oh yeah / Money, honey" – Polly sings through an alien vocal effect.
That's what they want, oh yeah, Money, honey (×4)
See them sitting, in the rain As the sky is darkening Three lines of traffic, are edging past The ministry of social affairs
At a junction on the ground an amputee and a pregnant hound Sit by the young men with withered arms As if death had already passed
Through every alleyway, and left A million beggars silhouettes Near where the money changers sit By their locked glass cabinets
What has happened, let's go and ask The ministry of social affairs Near where the money changers sit By their locked glass cabinets
That's what they want, oh yeah, Money, honey (×6)
10 "The Wheel"
Spoiler! :
A revolving wheel of metal chairs Hung on chains, squealing Four little children flying out A blind man sings in Arabic
Hey little children don't disappear (I heard it was 28,000) Lost upon a revolving wheel (I heard it was 28,000)
Now you see them, now you don't Children vanish behind a vehicle Now you see them, now you don't Faces, limbs, a bouncing skull
Hey little children don't disappear (I heard it was 28,000) All that's left after a year (I heard it was 28,000) A faded face, the trace of an ear (I heard it was 28,000)
A tableau of the missing Tied to the government building 8000 sun-bleached photographs Faded with the roses
Hey little children don't disappear (I heard it was 28,000) Lost upon a revolving wheel (I heard it was 28,000) All that's left after a year (I heard it was 28,000) A faded face, the trace of an ear (I heard it was 28,000)
And watch them fade out And watch them fade out
11 "Dollar, Dollar": begins with a sample of the beggars whose cry gives it its title.
Spoiler! :
A boy stares through the glass He's saying "dollar dollar" Three lines of traffic past We're trapped inside our car His voice says "dollar dollar"
I turn to you to ask For something we could offer Three lines of traffic past We pull away so fast All my words get swallowed
In the rear view glass A face pock-marked and hollow He's saying "dollar dollar" I can't look through or past
They say "dollar dollar" A face pock-marked and hollow Staring from the glass
+ + +
"Age of the Dollar", "The Boy"
[John Parish called "The Boy" an "awful" song, and the band insisted on that Polly should cross it out of the setlist, so this song is probably didn't finished.]
+ + +
"Imagine This": first song that she wrote after "Let England Shake" - Feb 2012, "for the Chain Letter project"; "Imagine this: around your eyes/ a rag is tied/ and you're on a track /right hand on the back /of another man"; blindfolded men being led away to a watery grave.
"Homo Sappy Blues": before the recording, it intended to be a potential lead single, but they changed it a lot; note "man to sing".
Spoiler! :
Jaw and a leg bones, reconstructed skull On continents or oceans They died so young
What God sent you, sent you from your cave? I need your wisdom Homo Sapiens
Path of your migration Is marked upon a map Looking like a tattoo On a kid's forhead
What God sent you, sent you from your cave? I need your wisdom If only for a day
What God sent you? (x2)
They dying young around here With a hunger in their guts And a taste for vodka Their friends' faces on their shirts
Last year they killed one Just for his shoes Tell me what God sent you? I got the Homo Sappy Blues
What God sent you? (×2)
"Guilty": song recounts a drone attack as witnessed through a grainy surveillance screen - "There's a little figure / on the television / scratching on the ground / waiting for the moment"; "What’s he doing with that stick? / Which one is guilty?".
"UNHCR" (UN High Commission for Refugees In The Field): "How to stop the murdering? / By now we should have learned"; "What we did / Why we did it / I make no excuse / I believe in the future we could do some good" (?).
"I'll Be Waiting": she wanted the guitar to be stuttering, in a bid to try and replicate the stuttering of children suffering from post-war trauma; she wants a young boy to take the lead and that she would shadow him; based on the poem "The Children" (?).
Some fan even wrote down the lyrics by the ear:
Spoiler! :
"I'll Be Waiting"
They swept across the land They did not leave a thing They did not leave a person A stone or a tree
They did not leave anything They did not leave anything
All they left is sand All they left is sand
I remember father I remember him Every minute I remember Every moment
Now I hate everyone Now I hate everyone Before I used to love
One day God shall grow One day God shall grow From their graves When they return
Over their graves I will be waiting And when they return I will be waiting
I will not leave a person Standing I will not leave anything I will not leave anything
All I'll leave is sand All I'll leave is sand
And then God shall grow And then God shall grow From their graves When they return
God will be growing Over their graves I will be waiting When they return
From another source: "I cannot forget / my father or brother/ they were killed / right in front of me"; "Now I hate everyone / Before I used to love all people".
"A Dog Called Money": based upon the poem "A Guy Who Knows What the Fuck's Going On" (?). ____________________________________________________________________________________________
I counted 19 altogether - just like in the very first recording reports: "chart on the wall with 19 titles".
Last edited by Kuk91 on Sun Feb 21, 2016 10:05 am, edited 10 times in total.
Regarding Homo Sappy Blues, that title reminds me a bit of Captain Beefheart's My Human Gets me Blues from 1969's Trout Mask Replica. The lyrics and intent of Don's song seem utterly different than Polly's however.
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